Drug blunders by overworked doctors on rise in Hong Kong’s public hospitals

Wrong dosage of drugs has consistently ranked top of the medication errors committed by doctors in public hospitals in the past five years, a Post investigation has found.

The number of incidents rose from 1,399 in 2010 to 1,913 in 2013.

The findings on medication errors were corroborated by figures released by the Hospital Authority in a separate series of reports, which show that the most serious untoward events reported between 2010 and 2014 were related to medication.

President of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists William Chui Chun-ming said a heavy workload and insufficient drug knowledge of doctors were to blame for medication problems.

By reviewing previous issues of Risk Alert, a quarterly public update of medical errors released by the authority, the Post has found that more than 1,000 medication incidents of varying severity were reported to the authority annually in the past five years.  Wrong dosage of drugs for inpatients was the top medication error type. Wrong patient and wrong drug came next.

However, more than 80 per cent of cases did not create any problems or the drugs were not actually given to patients. The authority, however, declined to specify which types of medication errors led to further treatment or major permanent loss of function.

Medication issues appear to be a long-standing problem. Reviewing the annual reports of  serious untoward events released by the authority, among the 94 events reported between October 2013 and last September,  85 were medication errors that could have led to a patient’s death or permanent harm, while more than half were related to known drug allergens.